De Padova Armchair Black Plastic material. Dimensions: L 61 cm x Depth 51 cm x H 80 cm – Seat H 46 cm. At a time when more and more people were starting to work from home for all or part of the day, the Italian designer Vico Magistretti developed the aluminium and polypropylene Silver series of chairs for De Padova. As his inspiration Magistretti took a 1920s chair designed by Marcel Breuer and manufactured by Thonet in Austria. Originally an architecture student, Magistretti turned to product and furniture design in the late 1940s during Italy’s post-war drive of reconstruzione. Typically he took an existing object as his starting point and then rethought it by assessing whether it could be improved with the use of modern materials and production processes.